AL MONITOR
by Mazal Mualem
August 27, 2014
“Let’s raise our heads. This is the time to stand and salute the IDF and the soldiers for the sacrifice, the devotion and the friendship they displayed during the fighting. There is no comparable army in the world, there isn’t a command it doesn’t know how to execute and we cannot survive without it.” The author of this outpouring of national pride is the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi Party, Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett, who composed a long post brimming with patriotic love for the State of Israel on the day after the Aug. 27 cease-fire. Bennett adorned the post with the photos of dust-covered fighters taken at the height of the fighting in Gaza. As expected, Bennett’s post turned into a Facebook hit: More than 800 shares and 12,895 likes, and not just from his regular fans.
Although he didn’t spare his harsh criticism of the weakness of the prime minister and defense minister toward Hamas during the operation, somehow Bennett managed to avoid being considered a fifth column inside the Cabinet. His remarks were no less acerbic than those of Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, but Bennett sounded more to the point than him, perhaps as a result of his military past as an officer in an elite unit. Bennett called for the toppling of Hamas and sniped at the prime minister throughout the fighting, attracting more and more support on the right at his expense. The reprimand he earned from Netanyahu during one of the Cabinet meetings (Aug. 20), demanding that he stop his public criticism of the government’s policy, only served to strengthen Bennett’s standing among right-wing circles.
Politically speaking, Bennett is probably the biggest winner of Operation Protective Edge. An Aug. 27 poll conducted by the Israeli daily Haaretz immediately after the cease-fire gave him 17 Knesset seats, five more than his current complement. According to the results, HaBayit HaYehudi becomes the second-largest party in the Knesset, after the Likud, leaving Liberman with a mere 11 seats.
As expected, after a significant defensive event such as Operation Protective Edge, the right-wing bloc has grown stronger and it holds 69 seats (out of 120), according to the poll (together with the ultra-Orthodox parties). This is a changing trend compared to the 2013 elections, when the two blocs were virtually tied and it seemed the radicalization toward the right had been stopped. Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who managed in the last elections to steal votes from the Likud, is losing them back to the right……
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